Post date: Apr 23, 2019 10:10:00 PM

Team: Liam Woods, Petie Barry, Emily Punzalan

Time: 4 hours

A short trip to attempt a climb into the high fossil in Mexican Passage. For those that don’t know Mexican Passage, it’s a large, well-decorated fossil inlet to the Legnabrocky way. After about 60-70m it reaches a huge slippery black flowstone formation about 6m high - The Black Mass - that you have to climb up and over. A short distance beyond this the main passage ends in a wall of infill and continues as tight grim crawls for the next 120m. Since the crawls are clearly much younger than the rest of Mexican Passage I’ve often wondered what water source cleared out Mexican Passage of it’s glacial infill. On my last visit here in 2010 I looked high up from the top of The Black Mass and there appeared to be inviting black spaces high above. My hunch was that since the passage lost height so dramatically there must be a higher level continuation somewhere above.

Armed with a drill and a few hangers my intention was to climb up from the top of The Black Mass and enter these passages. Arriving at the top of the Black Mass the passage was as I remembered it, with a pair of black shadows about 5m and 8m above. The best way up to them was via a muddy ledge which led up to a reasonably flat area from which the black shadows could be reached. Getting safely onto the ledge was the problem. Virtually everything within reach was made of calcite so I had little hope of placing a safe belay. About 3m away I could see some limestone, but getting to it involved a committing bold step and it wasn’t clear how I’d stay in position long enough to place a bolt.

After a bit of hemming and hawing I climbed down on the far side of the Black Mass and headed upstream. I remembered there was a climb up into the roof of the passage before it closed down into the crawl and about 15m way I found it, an awkward undercut calcite climb of about 5m from which it would be possible to climb up much higher into the roof. Luckily there was a few egg-sized calcite stumps that I could hook ropes over.

After a bit of poking I found a natural and was able to thread my belt through it. After making a footloop from the end of the rope and slinging it over a calcite stump I was able to step up a bit higher, and by swopping my feet about and transferring the footloop to successively higher stumps I scaled the climb. From here easy bridging upwards brought me to a ledge looking across to the lower of the two black holes visible from the top of the Black Mass. Clearly the lower one was a no-go. I couldn’t see the higher hole from this vantage point, but my impression of this area is that it’s heavily choked with sandy infill and calcite. After climbing back down to the rope I was able to to abseil the 5m to the floor and a flick of the rope lifted it off its (very slight) calcite stump and brought it back home.

So a drill, rigging kit and three SRT kits hauled in to no particular avail. Ah well. Another lead scratched off the list at least. Well, sort of scractched off. I can't be sure that the higher hole doesn't go, but I'm not enthusiastic.

- Petie